Clearing Those Clogged Arteries: ATLANTA

Atlanta is transforming its downtown connector highway from a bottleneck to a breeze. The connector had become congested because of the growth of Atlanta's northern suburbs. Thousands of commuters migrate south each morning on two interstate highways, I-85 and I-75, which funnel into the connector three miles north of downtown. By the mid-1970s, the four-lane highway was jammed with more than 100,000 autos a day, twice its capacity. Atlanta responded in 1978 with a $1.4 billion plan for "freeing the freeways." Computer models showed traffic engineers where to expand the system and where to streamline it by eliminating entrances and exits....